Monitoring and Evaluation have a range of purposes in humanitarian programming, but among the most critical to ultimately achieve the best outcomes for crisis-affected populations are:
Therefore, any monitoring and evaluation in CARE is expected to give particular attention to aspects of gender, age and other elements of intersectionality and related differences in vulnerabilities, capacities and thus needs
Efficient decision making and evidence-based learning heavily depend on the quality and timeliness of monitoring & evaluation. A Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) system for humanitarian responses should be adaptable to the scope, scale and the pace of the crisis while at the same time provide a clear indication to the response team about the objectives and activities of the response.
• Ensure an appropriate ME(A)L system is in place and is functioning satisfactorily:
- appropriate indicators at the outset of the emergency response (drawing on CARE global indicators, Sphere a.o.)
- tools and plans for data collection, analysis and review
- reporting formats and calendar
• Periodically review and revise the system so that it is adapted appropriately to changing operating contexts.
• Ensure relevant and timely information regarding response progress, outputs and results is provided in user-friendly formats to key stakeholders, including CO response / senior management team for decision making, beneficiary communities, and donors.
• Provide training and mentoring for CO staff, esp. ME(A)L team
• Act as a focal point to organise and manage regular response reviews (RTR, RAR, AAR), external evaluations and multi-agency reviews/evaluations.
Many team members will have responsibility for monitoring and evaluation activities in a humanitarian response whether full or part time, some of them might have already existing positions with MEL functions, others will be newly recruited. To establish an efficient MEL unit and a coherent M&E System it is therefore important that a member of the response team is assigned to the function of a MEL Coordinator or Manager, considered a critical position in the management structure of a CARE response. This is usually a full-time position that will be responsible for bringing all staff members involved in M&E into an efficient unit.
It is critical that the CO’s MEAL unit is closely involved with the response team from the very outset of the humanitarian crisis. Thus ideally, the response MEL team should be led from the onset (including during needs assessments) by an experienced MEL Coordinator. Where this capacity does not exist, it is important for the CO to appoint or recruit a MEL Coordinator for specifically for the humanitarian operation as quickly as possible. The CARE emergency response roster can identify and mobilize additional capacities especially during surge and fast scale-up or adaptation phases.
With the adequate expertise and within the appropriate set up the MEL Coordinator function can be combined with the function of leading Accountability initiatives in order to lead the MEAL (Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning) approach.
For the Roles and Responsibilities of a CO Response ME(A)L Coordinator or Manager please see Box.
A generic MEAL Manager JD a n d a sample ME Manager JD can be found in the RESSOURCES Section of this chapter.
Other ME(A)L responsibilities for key positions involved in humanitarian responses by CARE include
| Terms | What is measured | Definition |
| Baseline | Initial conditions / needs before the intervention | IInformation about the situation a project is trying to affect, showing what it is like before the intervention(s); mostly related to needs and Outcome or Impact level indicators |
| Benchmark | Standard of achievement | A standard of achievement that a project is expected to achieve / has achieved, which it can compare with other achievements |
| Milestone | Performance at a critical point | A well-defined and significant step towards achieving a target, output, outcome or impact, which allows people to track progress |
| Bias | A tendency to make errors in one direction. For example, are there potential for errors because not all key stakeholder groups have been consulted? Are there incentives that reward incorrect information? Does reporting a death in the family mean that food ration levels might be reduced? | |
| Monitoring | Activities, Inputs, outputs | Monitoring is usually continuous – or at least periodic and frequent – and internal and is largely concerned with activities and their immediate results as it is with systems and processes. |
| Evaluation | Outputs – outcomes – impact | Evaluation tends to be an episodic – and often external – assessment of performance and can look at the whole of |
